Light curing is a known technique in dentistry for curing, for example, composites and adhesives for the filling of root canals or fissures. Light cure restoratives are utilized throughout the dental care industry from dental maintenance to root canal restorations. Activation and polymerization of light cure restoratives must be carefully controlled. However, a means to inform a dental practitioner of an instrumentation measurement using a clear, audible language or tones appears to be lacking in the prior art.
Audible signals are known to be used in association with data items as displayed visually in a dental instrument, as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,968,252 to Creps. Yet, this present approach can lead a dental practitioner to confusion when surrounded by a multitude of such signals each prompting the practitioner for visual monitoring of the display in response to the audio signals. To view the display, the practitioner is thereby required to remove his or her vision from a field of action, resulting in a loss of time and focus on the dental task at hand.
Timing is a critical aspect of light curing in dental restorations. For dental fillings, a light cure restorative is typically placed in the apex of a tooth and activated with light. For root canal procedures, after a root canal is sealed, the remainder of the root canal is filled with light cure restorative and activated by light. An undesirable property of light-cured composite resin restorative materials is contraction during the curing process. For proper curing, curing light intensity must be carefully maintained, necessitating accurate tracking and monitoring. Dentists have learned through experience how to minimize the effects of contraction, and how to avoid open margins. Applying and curing small increments of the restorative material and accurate timing have been keys to minimizing these problems. However, managing accurate timing while practicing a dental procedure continues to present a substantial burden for dental practitioners.